Bruce Smart is an 82-year-old landowner near Upperville, a breeze-through town on the far western reaches of Route 50 in Loudoun County. He was one of the 25 landowners who intervened in the Virginia Supreme Court decision two weeks ago in an attempt to keep slow-growth zoning on western Loudoun land.
Smart and his wife moved to Upperville two decades ago. At the time, Smart was working for the Reagan administration. A lot has changed since then.
For one, Smart has started voting Democratic for president. For another, the very place he lives in has changed from idyllic countryside to threatened vestige of another way of life.
Smart has thought about leaving, moving farther west, maybe Clarke County, like others he knows have done.
"This is our home," he said. "We don't want to be driven out of it. If I was 50, I might think about it."
SMART AND THE OTHER 25 landowners who intervened in the court decision had a preliminary victory on April 15. But it was too soon to celebrate: just four days later, Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Horne issued his decision: that the land in western Loudoun, all 230,000 acres of it, reverts to zoning that allows one house per three acres.
It was just the opposite of what the interveners wanted to hear. The slow-growth measures Horne had just eliminated had restricted homes to one per 10 to 50 acres.
"This is very sad," Smart said.
He fears the decision will mean more of what has already happened near his home: crops of giant homes built on tiny square lots with "no effort to design homes in consideration of the land," he said.
While the interveners have not made formal action to appeal Horne's decision by press time Tuesday, it's likely that they will.
"I think the chances are pretty clear that we are going to take the next step," said Malcolm Baldwin, a former lawyer who is now a sheep farmer near Lovettsville.
Baldwin also said that support for the interveners has grown. Since the group, which collectively owns 4,000 acres, had to act quickly before Horne made his decision, landowners heard about it by word-of-mouth. Now, more western Loudoun landowners want to help protect strict zoning — which is known as "snob zoning" by critics who want to keep the ability to subdivide land.
"There is a lot of sympathy for this cause," Baldwin said.
ACCORDING TO PIEDMONT Environment Council president Chris Miller, also an attorney, the landowners have 10 days after Horne files his order to submit a notice of appeal.
While Horne has indicated how he will rule, he has not yet filed his order and it's unknown when he will.
That leaves more time for the interveners to organize.
"We don't think the clock is tolling," Miller said.
Miller estimates that a Supreme Court appeal would cost about $20,000 to $30,000 — a price tag he calls "not prohibitive."
"The fight is on," he said. "There isn't any backing down."
Meanwhile, the Board of Supervisors is making its own investigations into what to do next. The board will hold a series of discussions on whether to keep A-3, the zoning term for one house per three acres, in the west as per the judge's order to tighten it up to protect the rural landscape as outlined in the county's comprehensive plan.
The first of four meetings will be held May 5 at the County Government Center in Leesburg.
At its April 19 meeting, the board decided to allow western landowners to "opt-in" to keep the zoning that was thrown out by the judge's decision, a move that may be moot due to notification rules.